Those Active Therapeutic Agents

The research is likely to be weak and suspect. A sample of six hundred bloggers out of twelve to sixty million, basically tell us that blogging is therapeutic.

In all honesty, the concept is not that far off the mark. There is likely to be a great deal of truth to the idea; that purging thoughts, issues, events, annecdotes and stories, the whole gestalt of writing and publishing, people hearing us, feels good. Not just in the short run, either. Make it a habit, and who knows?

On the other hand, Hemingway killed himself.

But when it comes to blogging, it's that complaining thing we've been talking about that matters. The talk dynamic in therapy, the narrative, is the active ingredient. That and a few psychotropics on occasion.*

Anyway, who cares about research validity/reliability of a survey? Blogger references ENT in the post.

Bean Jones tells us that Blogging Is More Than What it Seems; it's good for you. So concludes the 2005 AOL survey about the reasons people blog. CNN followed this year, you might remember, with other research and a wink in our direction. It was a good week.

I have to write that book that Empath Daught told me to write ages ago. If only people still read books.

Wait. Maybe they do. Even though it's likely you watch YouTube whenever you can steal away, and even though you read blogs when you're not whipping up a gourmet recipe or eating pizza, my hunch is that most of you read books, too.

Here's a bit of what Bean Jones tells us over at the Blogger website, Simple.ology

Lately I've been worried over what to blog about. (Chalk it up to my brain going fuzzy from decongestants.) But then a friend gave me a link to an article discussing the results of a 2005 AOL survey done by Digital Marketing Services Inc. and I found myself energized.

A total of 600 bloggers--men and women aged 18 and above--participated in the survey.

About 48 percent of the bloggers revealed that they kept a blog because "it serves as a form of therapy" while around 40 percent stated that blogging "helps them keep in touch with family and friends."

Bill Schreiner, Vice President and General Manager of Community Programming for America Online, observed: "In a way, blogs serve as oral history. When it comes to sharing blogs and reading other people's blogs, we like to connect with people, learn about their lives, and find common ground."

An inspiring CNN article affirms blogging's therapeutic benefits. In it, journalist Anna Jane Grossman cites the results of the polls done by the Pew Internet and American Life Project in 2006. The results revealed that "roughly 12 million Americans have blogs...and many seem to use them as a form of group therapy."

Indeed, many blogs have transformed into informal support groups. They range from the low-key Everyone Needs Therapy to the bold and busy TreeHugger.


Bean goes on.

For those of us who like attention, this was a very nice thing, Simple-ology's recognition of a low-key (what could be better description than that) blog.

Hmmmm. Do you think that this might be one of the reasons people do it, blog? Could it be that attention thing?

therapydoc

*There are many active ingredients in therapy that works; the greatest of all, for sure, something we call a therapeutic relationship with a therapist.

The Cell Phone

This is one of those, I get by with a little help from my friends posts. Like the geese.

It was disconcerting, and I'm not a person easily disconcerted.

On N0vember 16, Blogger posted an email on this blog that I wrote to the Blogger team to get started with GoBlogger (sufficiently confused yet?)

GoBlogger is an interface that allows you to post to your blog from your cell phone, theoretically, using e-mail. There's a November 16 post, titled NEW BLOG, that makes no sense, and I had no idea it would get posted to ENT.

But I'm too terrified to delete it.

All I wanted to do was post your comments from my cell phone. That's all I asked. The phone is somehow supposed to know how to do that, somehow, perhaps, by secret messaging or technological telepathy with GoBlogger, but things aren't working out.

I can get the Treo 750 (a Palm) to do most tricks. Except I haven't been able to publish to Blogger OR get Palm to send me my $250 dollars in promised rebates. (What were the chances of that, anyway? Perhaps I should have told ATT that I blog).

Don't believe the rebate part if you sign up with them. They either lie, or make the float really float. It's been floating for months now.

Anyway, if any of you know how to do this, publish comments to a Blogger blog from a Treo, please share the wealth. I'm going to need to do that during jury duty this week. Yes, you heard correctly, jury duty.

When called for civic duty, yours truly jumps at the opportunity. Which is why YOU get an adamant NO, if you ask me to write you a note to get you out of yours. Just go. If you're psychotically ill, they'll get it. You won't get called for a panel.

Onto Thanksgiving. What, you're dreading the holiday and your therapist is taking off work the week of Thanksgiving? Tell it to the judge.

I'm hoping there will be time tomorrow to write something appropos while hanging around, doing nothing, waiting for them to tell me I'm not the droid they're looking for. Would you want me on YOUR jury? I think not.

Anyway, much obliged to anyone who can help me with my cell phone-blogger problem.

And a happy Thanksgiving to all if I don't post about your depression before that,

Oh, and if I don't post about Thanksgiving, just find a showing of last Saturday night's (November 17) Midnight Special. Maybe it's on itunes or youtube or something. There are some really good songs that will get you in the mood to deal with family and not feel that excruciating desire for Xanax.

wish me luck,

therapydoc